Gavin O’Connor Set To Write & Direct ‘Suicide Squad 2’

Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment have set Warrior director Gavin O’Connor to both write and direct the upcoming Suicide Squad currently in development.

After talks with Mel Gibson did not pan out, Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Non-Stop) emerged as the reported front-runner to direct the sequel, however, the director since signed on to helm the Jungle Cruise film at Disney. The Legend of Tarzan scribe Adam Cozad was originally on board to write the script but O’Connor will now fill both of those roles.

According to Variety, the sequel is a top priority for the studio and Warner Bros. is looking to begin production on the film this year along with Shazam which is currently in pre-production. Should this be the case, it would squash the recent rumor that the Suicide Squad 2 was not going to start shooting until the fall of 2018 due to Will Smith’s busy schedule. Principal photography on Shazam was also not expected to begin until February of next year.

Suicide Squad star Jared Leto is confirmed to be returning for the sequel along with Margot Robbie and Smith but it remains unclear whether or not the sequel will also see the return of Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Jai Courtney as George “Digger” Harkness (Captain Boomerang), Jay Hernandez as Chato Santana (El Diablo), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Waylon Jones (Killer Croc), Cara Delevingne as June Moone (Enchantress), Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Adam Beach as Christopher Weiss (Slipknot), and Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne (Batman).

Stay tuned to Heroic Hollywood for the latest news on the Suicide Squad sequel as we learn it.

6 Elseworlds Movies That DC Should Make For The Big Screen

Occasionally, there are times when comic book authors toss comic book continuity aside and straight-up create an alternate universe to tell brand new stories that bend the rules of the characters and radically change their settings as a side effect. DC calls these stories “Elseworlds,” and from the sound of things, DC is coming up with a plan to introduce that concept into their movie division with the standalone Joker movie set outside of the DC Extended Universe. The project, which has yet to be formally announced by Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, is set in the 1980s and is styled after movies like Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (fitting, considering that Scorsese is producing the project). It should be noted that the DCEU is still in active development on a Joker & Harley Quinn project, featuring Jared Leto and Margot Robbie reprising their roles from Suicide Squad, following that movie’s unexpected cliffhanger.

Whether or not having a mix of creator-driven and shared-universe-driven narratives get developed at the same time will work, or whether audiences will be confused by it, remains to be seen. It certainly has worked for DC’s animated movies (as evident by most movies being their own thing while some — like Justice League: War and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract — share the same setting), but in an age of cinematic universes, this might be harder to pull off. The DC Elseworlds Multiverse, as we’ll call it for the sake of this article, has a lot of source material it could draw upon to tell one-off stories. While the DCEU will continue tell one big story about the return of the so-called Age of Heroes, the DCEM should be able to take advantage of the nature of self-contained stories and go completely nuts with them, embracing their radical departure from the source material and telling the kinds of stories we could never see in a shared universe.

Here are 6 stories that we think need to be brought to the big screen as part of Warner Bros. and DC’s Elseworlds-style universe. Click Next to get started.